Police have an eye on your plates

Photographing with camera-equipped cruisers

By Sarah Sacheli, The Windsor Star

Originally published: September 20, 2011

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Big Brother is watching, and his name is OPP Const. Kirk Jeffery.

Jeffery is patrolling the roads and highways of Essex County Ontario in a camera-equipped cruiser that snaps a photo of every single licence plate that comes within an eightmetre radius. The three pairs of roof-mounted cameras are connected to an on-board computer that automatically runs the plate information through a database that includes stolen vehicles, arrest warrants, even expired validation stickers.

"Bing, bing, bing, bing." The display screen sounds like an arcade game as Jeffery drives north on Manning Road. Each "bing" represents a photograph captured by the cameras. The computer can process 30 frames per second.

There’s no way an officer with a partner could ever process so much information.

Even on a quiet street with little traffic, "you couldn’t keep up and it’s not safe to even try," Jeffery said.

The technology is called ALPR, short for Automated Licence Plate Recognition. It has been used in the United States for decades, but it’s relatively new in Canada. The OPP, with five cruisers outfitted with the technology, began using it last fall. The cruisers rotate throughout the province. Currently, the Essex detachment has one of the cruisers, but it’s due to be shuffled off to another OPP jurisdiction soon.

Jeffery is one of just two traffic officers in the region trained to use the $120,000 cruiser.

Monday, Jeffery got three "hits" within just a few kilometres. Two were false alarms. The computer can mistake an E for an F and vice versa, Ds for zeros or Os. The officer has to check the photo of the licence plate against the flagged information for such errors. The screen also displays a description of the flagged vehicle. The officer can check the description against the colour photograph of the vehicle.

"There are still some bugs that need to be worked out," said Jeffery. Even a hit without an error requires a call to a dispatcher to run a plate to make sure the information is up to date.

The database is updated daily, but that may not be current enough for things like expired validation tags, Jeffery said. A driver could be heading home after buying new stickers for his or her plates when the car is flagged by the on-board computer. A check by the dispatcher would show the plate has been renewed.

Jeffery’s third hit in Monday’s demonstration was a grey Volkswagen Jetta with an expired tag. The hit was valid. Driving with an expired sticker carries a $110 fine.

Thanks to infrared cameras, ALPR works in the dead of night. Even in Monday’s driving rain, the cameras captured clear photos of every passing plate.

The technology scares criminal defence lawyer Kirk Munroe. "Gawd, that’s spooky," said the outspoken critic of what he calls "privacy intrusions by police."

Munroe said if police can outfit a cruiser with such technology, what’s to stop them from installing it at every intersection or even outside of every home.

"This is 1984," Munroe said, referring to the George Orwell book where people are under constant government surveillance.

"It can do what a police officer could never do. That’s what makes it so scary."

But Jeffery calls it "a tool" to make his job easier and safer.

"It allows the officer to focus on the road and the traffic," said Jeffery, pulling over to read the displayed information about the flagged Volkswagen. "It’s safer for me and it helps me do more work."